Egypt’s imports of mobile phones fell 58.3 percent year-on-year to $313.3 million in the first five months of the year, a recent bulletin by the country’s statistics agency CAMPAS showed.
Last year, imports of mobile phones registered $752.203 million in the January-May 2021 period.
In May 2022, the imports dived 91 percent year-on-year to $12.983 million from $145.183 million in the same month last year.
The fall in imports came in the wake of a 10 percent import tariff imposed by authorities in Egypt on all imported mobile phones, according to a presidential decree announced last November.
Prior to this decree, mobile phones in Egypt had been subject to a 14 percent value-added tax (VAT) in addition to a 5 percent development tax and a 5 percent import fee originally imposed by the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) in 2020.
